"Tudo Que Você Podia Ser" by Lô Borges
Singalong 026: Not a polite party
Here’s another classic from the “Clube da Esquina” album.
“Com sol e chuva você sonhava / Que ia ser melhor depois / Você queria ser o grande herói das estradas / Tudo que você queria ser”
“With sun and rain, you used to dream / That it would get better later / You wanted to be the great hero of the roads / Everything you wanted to be”
I put the album on a cassette and wore it out in my VW Rabbit for years after I returned from living in Brazil, totally entranced by these guys. Tributes, covers and remakes of these songs pop up all over the landscape, they are still making an impact over 50 years after release.
The first thing tourists overlook when they start checking out Brazilian music is the enormous political significance of the songs. Everyone gets drawn in by the melodies, the rhythms and images. Crowds of glittery people singing and dancing in the street, sunsets, cocktails and fruit baskets worn on heads. But if you don’t go there, you have no idea of what a scary place the country can be. Brazilians are accustomed to living with massive amounts of crime, death and political violence as part of everyday life.
“Sei um segredo você tem medo / Só pensa agora em voltar / Não fala mais na bota e do anel de Zapata / Tudo que você devia ser sem medo”
“I know a secret: you're scared / Now you only think about going back / You don't talk about Zapata's boot and rings now / Everything you should've fearlessly been”
Another thing that’s common? Massive protest marches in the street. People march all the time. Right or left, it doesn’t matter. Brazilians are in the habit of getting out the door and joining a march, filling the avenues with thousands of people and disrupting traffic. And they don’t do it for their health, the grievances are real. One time in São Paulo I was told to stay indoors because the teacher’s union was marching and riots were going down everywhere. Nowhere was safe.
That’s right: the teacher’s union. Out in the street, and not just carrying signs and chanting. Schoolteachers were fighting, throwing rocks and launching M-80’s into the sky.
“E não se lembra mais de mim / Você não quis deixar que eu falasse de tudo / Tudo que você podia ser na estrada”
“And you don't remember me / You wouldn't let me tell about everything / Everything you could've been on the roads”
I point this out so that you’ll start to hear beyond the vapid “party” label that people put on this music. Gringos think they’re gonna sip on caipirinhas to the wafting sound of dulcet bossas nova and then rock out in the street for a while as they find their way into a pleasant evening grind with a willing latin lover. And most will do just that, catching their flight back to the “first” world none the wiser, a box on their bucket list checked.
But we have so much to learn from Brazil. If you live there, if you’re from there, these songs have a completely different meaning. And most of the time, the party is definitely not a party. Not a polite party, at least.
These are not “protest” songs, though. Not like you might think. When this album came out, the great social movements of the 60’s had been crushed. The military regime was flexing: people were getting kidnapped and disappeared on the regular, usually tortured to death. Artists had been sent into exile and the message was clear: free speech is not a thing.
So the songs had to communicate with ambiguity, which makes it complicated for an outsider like me to try and sing them. Go and learn Portuguese. I took some classes, but it was learning to sing songs that really brought it together for me. There are hundreds of great songs from this era. I drank them in during my 20s and it ruined me for USA rags like “Blowin’ In The Wind”, “If I Had a Hammer”, “For What It’s Worth”, “Born In The U.S.A.” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. That stuff is so on-the-nose in comparison. None of our artists were truly afraid for their lives, they could sing directly about what they saw and be as angry as they wanted.
“E não se lembra mais de mim / Você não quis deixar que eu falasse de tudo / Tudo que você podia ser na estrada”
“And you don't remember me / You wouldn't let me tell about everything / Everything you could've been on the roads”
So this is not an explicitly political song. The lyrics don’t ring in English, it would come off like a Tony Robbins tape or something. “Keep your head up, man. Be all that you can be!” For Americans™, optimism is something we ingest like a smoothie, calibrating our levels of it like cholesterol or the coolant in our fast cars. Nice to have, but it’s not a life-or-death thing.
But early 70s Brazil was a graveyard of shattered dreams, and you were not allowed to talk about it. The “Summer of Love” and “Me Generation” in the U.S. were the “Years of Lead” in Brazil. Amid censorship, persecution and death, the melody and a metaphor were a lifeline. They had to count.
And count they do.
The character in this song is speaking to someone who keeps their convictions under wraps, having let their vibrant past fade into a timid and sad present. Distant from their friends, detached from what lies broken around them.
“Ah! Sol e chuva na sua estrada / Mas não importa não faz mal / Você ainda pensa e é melhor do que nada / Tudo que você consegue ser ou nada”
“There's sun and rain on your road / But it doesn't matter, doesn't hurt / You still think and that's better than nothing / Everything that you can become, or nothing”
But even under repression, the capacity to think and reflect is always there. If that’s all you’ve got, you’ve got to use it. You can’t kill an idea, no matter how hard the times.
So I’ve been working up my gringo version:
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